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Credit & Copyright: Raul Villaverde
Explanation:
Three thousand light-years away,
a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas.
This image from the
Hubble Space Telescope reveals the
Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), to be one of the most complex
planetary nebulae known.
Spanning half a
light-year,
the features seen in the
Cat's Eye
are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright
central object
may actually be a
binary star system.
The term planetary nebula, used to describe this
general class of objects, is
misleading.
Although these objects may appear round and
planet-like in small telescopes,
high resolution images with large telescopes reveal them to be
stars surrounded by
cocoons of gas blown off in the late stages of
stellar evolution.
Gazing into this Cat's Eye,
astronomers may well be seeing more than detailed structure,
they may be seeing the fate of our Sun, destined to enter its own
planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about
5 billion years.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: Cat's Eye Nebula - planetary nebula
Publications with words: Cat's Eye Nebula - planetary nebula
See also:
- APOD: 2025 June 9 B Between Scylla and Charybdis: A Double Cosmic Discovery
- APOD: 2025 May 14 B NGC 1360: The Robins Egg Nebula
- APOD: 2025 April 27 B IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula
- APOD: 2025 April 16 B Halo of the Cats Eye
- APOD: 2025 April 15 B Planetary Nebula NGC 1514 from Webb
- Planetary Nebula Abell 7
- The Medusa Nebula